Warning - Norco 4220 drive trays and airflow

O

odditory

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 23, 2007
Messages
6,482
This forum has a dedicated Norco storage products thread but I thought this was important enough to post on its own.

If you own a Norco RPC-4220 or RPC-4224 server case, you may have noticed that the drive trays contain an ingenious slide mechanism to open or close the the front air vent, for the purpose of decreasing airflow to drive bays that are empty. After a bit of research and contacting Norco I confirmed that while these cases generally ship with trays defaulted *open*, at some points they have shipped with drive trays defaulted *closed*. Since these cases don't ship with any instructions, the danger is some people not noticing the slide mechanism, and mounting their drives into trays with closed vents - I did.

I recently found one of my three RPC-4220 cases fully populated with drives to have all of its vents closed - I simply hadn't noticed when I built the system. For months I'd wondered why they were running hotter temps than the same drives in my other cases. Opening the vents has made an average 6C difference in lower temp on my Hitachi 2TB drives. The good news is you don't have to unscrew the drive from the tray to open the vent - just use a screwdriver to slide it. This photo courtesy of Picker from the Norco thread. Check your vents! Any trays with drives, open it. Any trays without drives, close it.

caddies.jpg
 
Last edited:
odditory: You should add a note to your OP to state that only drive bays containing drives should be open. All unpopulated bays should be closed to force the airflow across the installed drives. If drive bays that do not contain a drive are opened, due to the lower resistance, the majority of the air will flow through those vents and defeat the purpose!
 
Noted, though I figured that would kind of be stating the obvious? :) OTOH I can see how some people might think opening all the vents would give their case better airflow.
 
Last edited:
odditory said:
Noted, though I figured that would kind of be stating the obvious? :) OTOH I can see how some people might think opening all the vents would give their case better airflow.
Click to expand...

Exactly why I figured you SHOULD state it! :) Thanks
 
Good to know thanks. You would think they would put something on the outside to open them. I found 10 or so closed, but I hate to have to remove the all the drives from the tray to open them.
 
You don't need to remove the drive from the tray to open the vent. Just use a flathead screwdriver and push the sliding piece of metal from the side. You do need to slide the tray out from the chassis a few inches though.
 
Most of mine wouldn't catch with a flathead. I figured there had to be a way so I played with an empty tray. In some of my trays the metal overlaps so you can't get a screwdriver in there, even using the smallest one I have.

I was able to easily open 4 that way, but so far on the rest I have had to unscrew the drives.
 
My RPC-2208 uses the same design, I luckily noticed it during the build and opened all the vents. It would be nice if these came with at least a small instruction manual (in engrish of course) explaining small things like this.
 
Looks like the newer Norco 4224 no longer have a way to close the vents in the unused trays. :mad:

Whats the best way to block them? I remember reading somewhere someone was going to try foam.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top